“Signs it’s God’s voice.”

Part of prayer is hearing God, and part of hearing God is confirming we truly heard him. You wanna know it’s God, you go find a fellow Christian who also hears God, and compare notes.

But people don’t wanna go find a fellow Christian and do that. We’d much rather tell ourselves, “Oh, I know what God sounds like,” be accountable to no one, and run with whatever we’re pretty sure he told us. Especially when it’s something which really appeals to our flesh.

So when we look for advice about how to hear from God, or how to know we’ve just heard from God, we’ll immediately uphold any shortcuts which tell us, “No you’re right; it’s totally God.” Which never threaten to make us feel foolish when a fellow Christian responds, “Oh God told me something very different,” or “I’m really not sure that’s God.” Which never require us to let iron sharpen iron.

I once got a list from a pastor on some ways we can tell it’s God talking to us. They’re all problematic because—again—they don’t require us to confirm anything with our fellow Christians. They don’t encourage us to interact with our Christian community. They encourage us to go it alone.

So naturally he got a lot of positive feedback from people who were thrilled to hear they didn’t have to talk with fellow Christians about what they thought God told ’em. Now they could confirm it’s God by themselves! In private. With no one to embarrass them for how fleshly their “still, small voice of God” actually sounds.

Some examples? Sure.

First bit of advice this pastor gave was, “The Holy Spirit lives within you, therefore many of the things you think are your own thoughts, ideas, impressions, feelings, and desires, are really the Holy Spirit speaking to your own spirit. So pay attention to all those things. It may be God!”

This is partly true.

The Spirit does indeed live inside us. He was sealed to us when we first became Christian, and “anyone joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.” 1Co 6.17 CSB So yeah, the Holy Spirit is gonna drop ideas into our spirits, and some of those clever ideas we think we have, are in fact God-ideas. The more we pay attention to our thoughts, the more we’re gonna detect God speaking to us through them.

But but but. Still gotta confirm these “God-ideas” are actually God-ideas. Because far too many Christians never bother to confirm anything, insist all their bright ideas are God-ideas, and treat them as such… and any outside observer will quickly discern these are just selfish schemes which didn’t originate from God at all. Christians are just mixing up the voices in their head with God, and following themselves instead of him.

The pastor didn’t point this out—that sometimes it’s not God behind our cleverest ideas—which simply perpetuates the problem. These ideas have to be tested. Confirm they’re God before you embrace them!

Second: “If it’s really the voice of the Lord, it’s going to be marked by the Lord’s nature. It’s going to love others like the Lord does. It’s going to benefit other people, sometimes at your expense. It’s going to require a sacrifice on your part. It’s going to force you to deny your flesh.”

Again, partly true. Yes, everything God tells us is going to be consistent with his character; it’s going to reflect the fruit of the Spirit. God’s going to be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. God’s gonna expect us to be those things too. We’ll be tempted to be fleshly; we must not be.

And yes, sometimes God’s instructions will cost us. We’ll have to spend time and money on them. We’ll have to be patient and self-controlled. Sometimes we’ll have to deny ourselves the things we want more. Typically they’ll be things we can do without.

Problem is, we’re not always the best at determining what we have available to sacrifice. Notice there are a lot of Christians who give up time and resources so they can minister to others… but the resources they choose to give up is not their work time, nor their leisure time. It’s their family time. It’s the resources they’re meant to put towards their adult responsibilities: They’ll skip chores and duties, and force their spouse to take up the slack they’ve created, and tempt them to resent God because of it. And this is hardly God’s fault.

Or Christians will give up all their rest time, and burn themselves out—and think they should; that God told them to. He did not. The idea to work themselves ragged was theirs, and theirs alone. Jesus offers us rest, Mt 11.28 not burnout. His yoke is easy, and it only appears burdensome because we pile on all the extra weight. Then blame God for it.

So yes, sometimes God is gonna tell us we need to give up some things so we can follow him better. And if they’re harmful and sinful, it’s kinda self-evident we need to give them up, whether God directly told us to or not. But if they’re not, let’s not assume this is a God-idea just because it appears to be self-sacrificial. God only tells us to give up things that’ll truly undermine us. When they’re only our ideas, we’ll give up too much, too little, or the wrong things. When they’re devilish ideas, they’ll definitely be the wrong things. Again: Confirmation!

Lastly (he had more advice, but I’m only going with three things today): “If it’s really the voice of the Lord, it’s going to stay with you. It will be very hard to shake! But if it’s not, it’ll quickly pass away.”

Meh, many of my own ideas are very hard to shake. But they’re my ideas. I know this because they don‘t reflect the Spirit’s fruit; some are kinda fleshly. Snide remarks, vengeful attitudes, selfish plans: I might like ’em, but I’m no fool; I know they’re not God-ideas.

And other clever plans which we can’t get out of our heads—plans to prosper ourselves, to make ourselves feel good or self-justified—aren’t so obviously fleshly, but they’re still our own ideas. They’re not God’s. They need to be submitted to God, just as James taught us:

James 4.13-17 CSB

13Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” 14Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes.

15Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it.

And if at any point God tells us, “You know that grand idea you have? Don’t do it,” we definitely need to hear that message.

It’s not bad advice. But confirm everything!

This pastor’s advice isn’t far different from other things I’ve heard from other Christians about whether we’ve heard from God. It’s out there in the popular Christian culture. It works its way into sermons and advice. And as the heading says, it’s not bad advice. But it can be, when we lack the wisdom to realize where it falls apart.

And where does it fall apart? When we follow it without confirming these messages came from God by talking with fellow Christians. When we follow it specifically so that we can avoid those fellow Christians, and discern whether it’s God’s voice on our own. Without input from other Spirit-indwelt Christians.

True, even when we confirm this stuff with other Christians’ help, we might still get it wrong. We can miss the point, or that fellow Christian we go to might share our selfish attitudes and we’ll lead one another astray. Confirming stuff with fellow Christians isn’t an infallible method. But going it alone is most definitely fallible. If I gotta choose between “might go wrong” and “definitely wrong,” the first option always makes more sense.